The Pacific-10 Conference (Pac-10) is a college athletic conference which operates in the western United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I; its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A), the higher of two levels of NCAA Division I football competition. The conference's ten members compete in 22 NCAA sports. It was founded as the Athletic Association of Western Universities or AAWU in 1959, and went by the names Big Five, Big Six, and Pacific 8 before becoming the Pacific 10 in 1978. The current commissioner of the conference is Thomas C. Hansen, who has announced that he will retire in July 2009 after 26 years in that position.^[1]

Membership

Full members

Locations of Pacific-10 Conference full member institutions.

Endowment

1. Stanford University-$17.2 billion
2. University of Southern California-$3.7 billion
3. University of California, Berkeley-$2.8 billion
4. University of Washington-$2.5 billion
5. University of California, Los Angeles-$2.2 billion
6. Arizona State University-$478 million
7. University of Arizona-$466 million
8. University of Oregon-$454 million
9. Oregon State University-$440 million
10. Washington State University-$354 million

Associate members (men's soccer)

• San Diego State University Aztecs

Associate members (wrestling)

• Boise State Broncos
• Cal Poly Mustangs
• Cal State Fullerton Titans
• Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunners
• Portland State Vikings
• UC Davis Aggies

History

Pacific Coast Conference

The roots of the Pac-10 Conference go back to December 15, 1915, when the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was founded at a meeting at the Oregon Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Charter members were the University of California (now University of California, Berkeley), the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and Oregon State College (now Oregon State University). The conference began play in 1916.

One year later, Washington State College (now Washington State University) joined the league, followed by Stanford University in 1918.

In 1922, the PCC expanded to eight teams with the admission of USC and Idaho. Montana joined the Conference in 1924, and in 1928, the PCC grew to 10 members with the addition of UCLA.

For many years, the conference split into two divisions for basketball -- a Southern Division comprising the four California schools and a Northern Division comprising the six schools in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1950, Montana departed to join the Mountain States Conference. The PCC continued as a nine-team league through 1958.

AAWU (Big Five and Big Six)

Following a "pay-for-play" scandal at several PCC institutions (specifically Cal, USC, UCLA and Washington), the PCC disbanded in 1959. When Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC, and Washington started talking about forming a new conference, retired Admiral Thomas J. Hamilton interceded and suggested the schools consider creating a "power conference". Nicknamed the "Airplane Conference", the five PCC schools would've played with other big schools including Army, Navy, Air Force, Notre Dame, Penn, Penn State, Duke, and Georgia Tech among others. The effort fell through when a member of the Pentagon vetoed the idea and the service academies backed out.^[3]

On July 1, 1959 the Athletic Association of Western Universities was formed, with Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC, and Washington as charter members. The conference also was popularly known as the Big Five from 1960-1962^[4] Washington State University joined in 1962. The conference was then known as the Big Six.^[4]

Pacific-8

The University of Oregon and Oregon State University joined in 1964. Idaho was not invited to join the AAWU and played as an independent until the formation of the Big Sky Conference in 1963.

In 1968, the AAWU renamed itself the Pacific-8 Conference, or Pac-8 for short.

Pacific-10

In 1978, the conference added WAC powers Arizona and Arizona State, creating the Pacific-10 conference or Pac-10 in its current form.

The Pac-10 claims the PCC's history as its own. It inherited the PCC's berth in the Rose Bowl, and the eight largest schools in the old PCC all eventually joined the new league. However, the older league had a separate charter.

The Pac-10 is one of the founding members of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, a conference organized to provide competition in non-revenue Olympic sports. All Pac-10 members participate in at least one MPSF sport, and for certain sports, the Pac-10 admits certain schools as Associate Members (which currently are San Diego State for men's soccer, and UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Boise State, Cal State Fullerton, Portland State, and Cal State Bakersfield for wrestling).

The conference expressed interest in admitting Texas after the collapse of the Southwest Conference. Texas expressed an interest in joining a strong academic conference, but joined three fellow SWC schools in forming the Big 12 Conference in 1996.^[5]

Of Division I conferences, only the Ivy League has maintained its current membership for a longer time than the Pac-10.

Pac-10 football rivalries

Big Game, 2004 between Cal and Stanford

• Cal-Stanford (The Big Game, winner gets the Stanford Axe). Notable history include The Play
• Arizona-Arizona State (The Duel in the Desert, winner gets the Territorial Cup)
• Washington-Washington State (winner gets the Apple Cup), notable history includes the Snow Bowl
• Oregon-Oregon State rivalry (The Civil War, winner gets the Platypus Trophy).
• UCLA-USC rivalry (winner gets the Victory Bell)

There are other notable football rivalries within the Pac-10 conference.

All of the California schools consider each other major rivals, due to the culture clash between Northern and Southern California. USC and Stanford have long-standing football grudge as the only two private institutions in the conference ^[6]. Cal and UCLA have a rivalry rooted in their shared history as the top programs within the University of California system. Cal and USC also have a long history, having played each other every year in football since 1916.

Oregon and Washington also have an unofficial rivalry (despite recent efforts to give it the name "The Cascade Clash") as the two most prominent schools in the Northwest. All of the Northwest schools consider each other as rivals due to the proximity and long history.

Arizona and New Mexico had a rivalry game played for the Kit Carson Rifle trophy.

USC and Notre Dame have an intersectional rivalry (See Notre Dame-USC rivalry). The games in Indiana are played in mid-October, while the games in Los Angeles are usually played in late November.

With the NCAA permanently approving 12-game schedules in college football in 2006, the Pac-10 ? alone among major conferences in doing so ? went to a nine-game conference schedule in which member schools now play each conference opponent every year. Previously, the schools did not play one non-rival opponent, resulting in an eight-game conference schedule (4 home games and 4 away).

Rivalries in other sports

All of the intra-conference rivalries in football are carried over into other sports. However, over the years UCLA and Arizona have developed a primarily basketball rivalry between the two schools because both teams have historically dominated the conference. In the last few years, Stanford's success has also led to a rivalry with Arizona, which peaked in 2000 with both receiving #1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. In addition, certain nonconference rivalries have developed in other sports.

During the 1970s, UCLA and Notre Dame had an intense men's basketball rivalry. For several years, it was the only nonconference game in Division I basketball that was played twice a season (home-and-home). Unquestionably, the most famous game in the rivalry was on January 19, 1974, when Notre Dame scored the last 12 points of the game to nip UCLA and end the Bruins' record 88-game winning streak. This rivalry is now dormant, partly because Notre Dame is no longer independent in sports other than football.

In Baseball, there are intense rivalries between the four southern schools. Arizona, Arizona State, USC and UCLA have long and successful histories in baseball and all have won national titles in the sport. The most intense series is widely regarded to be the "Basebrawl" series between #97 USC and #95 Arizona State in 1990. Arizona State swept the series and in the final game a bench clearing brawl spread quickly to the stands and made national headlines. Several were injured and riot police were called to end the fracas.

Washington and California have a longstanding rivalry in men's crew as the two traditionally dominant programs on the West Coast.

The campuses of Washington State University and the University of Idaho are eight miles apart, creating a natural border war. Recently, the football rivalry has been dubbed Battle of the Palouse.

Due to the unique geographic nature of the Pac-10 teams, the teams travel in pairs for road basketball games. For example, on Thursday, February 28, 2008, USC played Arizona and UCLA played Arizona State. Two nights later the teams switched and USC played Arizona State and UCLA played Arizona. The teams are paired as followed: USC and UCLA (the L.A. teams), Arizona and Arizona State (the Arizona teams), Cal and Stanford (the Bay Area teams), Washington and Washington State (the Washington teams), and Oregon and Oregon State (the Oregon teams). Usually, the games are played on Thursdays and Saturdays with a game or occasionally two on Sundays for television purposes.

Conference facilities

Past Conference Champions

Men's Basketball

The Pacific Coast Conference began playing basketball in the 1915-16 season. The PCC was split into North and South Divisions for basketball beginning with the 1922-23 season. The winners of the two divisions would play a best of three series of games to determine the PCC basketball champion. If two division teams tied, they would have a one game playoff to produce the division representative. Starting with the first NCAA Men's Basketball Championship in 1939, the winner of the PCC divisional playoff was given the automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. Oregon, the 1939 PCC champion, won the championship game in the 1939 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament.

The last divisional playoff was in the 1954-55 season. After that, there was no divisional play and all teams played each other in a round robin competition. From the 1955-56 season through the 1958-59 season, the regular season conference champion was awarded the NCAA tournament berth from the PCC. In the case of a tie, a tie breaker rule was used to determine the NCAA tournament representative.

Beginning with the 1975 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, the Pac-10 would usually place at least one other at-large team in the tournament.

By the 1985-86 season, the Pac-10 was one of three remaining conferences that gave their automatic NCAA tournament bid to the regular season round-robin champion. The other two conferences were the Ivy League and the Big Ten Conference.

The modern Pacific-10 Conference Men's Basketball Tournament format began in 1987. It was dropped after 1990 upon opposition from coaches and poor revenue and attendance.^[37]

The tournament was restarted by a 8-2 vote of the athletic directors of the conference in 2000 after determining that a tournament would help increase exposure of the conference and help the seeding of the schools in the NCAA tournament.^[38]

See also

• Bold Text denotes National Champion. (Arizona was National Champion in 1997, but not Conference Champion.)
• Pac-10 Tournament

Women's Basketball

Football

* Denotes Pac-10 representative in Rose Bowl
Co-champions vs Rose Bowl See page 137 of Pac-10 Handbook for explanation Bold Denotes unofficial National Champion recognition

See also

• Pacific-10 Conference football statistics
• Pacific-10 Conference football awards

Baseball

Note: Oregon dropped its baseball program following the 1981 season and will reinstate it in 2009
*denotes North-South playoff champion
**denotes Pac-8 playoff champion
***denotes Pacific Coast Conference playoff champion
****California won the CIBA Division 1 and USC won Division
2. Cal defeated USC in a playfoff for the CIBA title.
LEGEND: PSU = Portland State, SC = Santa Clara
Bold text indicates National Champion

Softball

Men's Soccer

The conference established men's soccer as a sponsored sport beginning in the 2000 academic year. Prior to then, most members who fielded a men's collegiate soccer team competed in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.

Note: Not all PAC-10 schools field a men's soccer team.

Women's Soccer

The conference established women's soccer as a sponsored sport beginning in the 1995 academic year.

Commissioners

PCC

• Edwin N. Atherton 1940-44
• Victor O. Schmidt 1944-59

AAWU

• Thomas J. Hamilton 1959-68

Pacific-8

• Thomas J. Hamilton 1968-71
• Wiles Hallock 1971-78

Pacific-10

• Wiles Hallock 1978-83
• Thomas C. Hansen 1983-

References

External links

• Pacific-10 Conference Official Website
• Pac 10 Sports Forum

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